If your drawing room (rather like
my own) can become a bit like a Chicago Sleep Easy after a couple of hands
of Bridge this interactive CD-ROM – replete with classical background
music - will be a blessing. A much healthier – even more politically correct
way to play cards, particularly if you live in smoke-free New York (how
dull life must be there now) – it takes the cigarette smoke out of your
home, the beer stains off your table and gives you an early night when
you want one. This disc brings a whole new meaning to the phrase having
a long night in. And it is much cheaper, in both cash and unusable matchsticks.

Because it’s interactive (when you’ve
copied the CD-ROM onto your hard-drive) you can play it online with others,
or, for those who always have to win, on your own against an array of
puppets – talking ones at that – and in a number of settings. Fantasy
Bridge becomes something of a reality when you can choose to play opposite
Maria Callas, Jascha Heifetz and Arturo Toscanini. At first it all seems
a little random – I really wanted to play at Covent Garden, but was seated
instead in the stalls at the Festival Hall (and how convincingly the designers
have got that right with just the right amount of dust sprayed over the
threadbare seats). Little details, like the backs of the cards, are fastidiously
drawn with scenes from famous operas – valkyries vying for attention,
Madam Butterfly sewing in a wigwam type paper house, Tosca (I think) seemingly
throwing herself off what looks like the Eiffel Tower. The voices themselves
are interspersed with music during the calls – and there is quite a lot
of that if you play Bridge. Maria Callas sings her call – three no trumps
she wobbles - whereas Toscanini kind of barks his – all between the gentle
wavering of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan. ‘You are my north, my
south, my east and west’ Auden wrote – but I doubt he had this in mind.

If Bridge isn’t your forte – and it
can take a lifetime to master – try a couple of rounds of Hearts. A game
where less is more – and wins you the game – this is much more fun, particularly
with these puppets. You can choose to play to 500 points if you wish,
but I recommend going into the preferences toolbar and changing the maximum
points win to 50. Playing on a barge with the backdrop of Sydney Opera
House was one thing but I could only take so much of Thomas Beecham plummily
saying ‘OH, I’ll take it then’ when dealt the Queen of Spades. Rather
amusingly, Callas (who seems to be a puppet in most of the games on this
CD-ROM, or just pops up whenever she feels like it) shouts, ‘I don’t want
that bitch!!’ (she was, of course, how shall I put it, more flowery with
her language in reality) when dealt the same card (the Queen of Spades,
of course, is worth 13 points – and you don’t want that card when you’ve
just won the Jack of Diamonds worth a dazzling –10). Shoot the moon (get
all 26 points, i.e. all the hearts and the Queen of Spades) and a wild
chorus of Rule Britannia throbs out of your speakers. The German
version of this game belts out Ride of the Valkyries, according to the
designers, the American a glitzy version of the Star Bangled Banner. The
French version – well the game crashed at that point.

Other nice little touches allow you
to insert your own face on to one or more of the puppets (simple copy
and paste works wonders). Your reviewer looked dapper in white tie, not
so good in a body-hugging frock. But what surprised me was how like the
real thing this is – lose too often and you do find yourself shouting
back at a Toscanini (and having the last word). That’s the eerie bit.

Playing online is nowhere near as
much fun in my view. Whilst you can pretend to be who you want (and who
doesn’t want to be a famous opera singer or conductor, at least for a
moment) you can end up playing against the oddest people. My partner in
a rubber of Bridge ended up being ‘Demon Slayer’; he (or she) played with
the subtlety of a sledgehammer. No match for the grace of my Lauritz Melchior
(‘where you from then?’ he (or she) emailed me later, then asking, ‘didn’t
they name an ice-cream after him?’). There’s no music of course if you
play it this way – but doesn’t it give you the chance to play that old
recording of La Traviata you almost forgot you had? And doesn’t
it give you a sense of superiority in knowing that ‘Demon Slayer’ was
probably playing something by Motorhead on the other side of the Atlantic?

All great fun – and probably worth
the $39 outlay if you are into this sort of thing (as your reviewer is,
but he doesn’t get out nearly enough). I have to confess, however – I
rather missed the cigarette smoke and the beer stains on the card table.

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